Four Pillars Of Game

As a follow-up to the previous entry Southern Man more or less plagiarizes this post from Smoke In My Eyes. SIME calls it "Four Pillars Of Game" but Southern Man will think of it as the four crucial aspects of social success - that is, to be both successful and be seen as successful in your social life.

He gives the four crucial ingredients of successful social interaction as

Be confident
Be interesting
Be exciting
Be a source of positive energy

which in turn lead to Four Pillars of Game, which he gives as

Confidence
Coolness
Excitement
Happiness

In other words, this zeros in on one of the four Biblical concepts described earlier - finding favor with man - and illustrates, in detail, how one might deliberately go about constructing a healthy and active social life. Southern Man, an introvert who can easily go days at a time without seeing another human being, is progressing nicely on three of those four concepts but needs all the help he can get when it comes to relationships and his social life. Now, ask Southern Man's friends to describe him in one word and "cool" and "exciting" are probably not going to make the list. Given his age and station that's not likely to change so he will focus on confidence and...contentment. He can't bring himself to say that he's happy, yet. Perhaps that's something that he can never achieve. But working to achieve confidence and contentment - the Inner Man - will reflect in the Outer Man and achieve the goals outlined here. As a start, one could simply glance at this list and say "today, I will do and be these things."

And it occurs to Southern Man that if he wishes to create a little bit of "cool" he should merely revive skills that he once had and has allowed to fall dormant. Southern Man was, at one time, a fairly proficient classical pianist. He should get some of those pieces back under his fingers and focus on his greatest weaknesses, sight-reading and improvisation. He also ought to pick up guitar again. The goal for both instruments will be to perform some easy pieces and improvise to the standard blues sequence. That would be immensely satisfying and a major step in building the Inner Man. It would also be cool. There's actually no excuse for not doing so; there's a full keyboard and acoustic guitar not fifteen feet from the PC. And Southern Man also played violin, 'way back in the day. His old student violin is still up in The Barn; a little work and he could be fiddlin' again.

Excitement? As soon as Southern Man gets his debts settled (about two more years) he is going to buy a motorcycle. Lord knows he's dreamed about it and talked about it long enough. And that will be exciting.